Western cities line up against FCC muni property grab

There must be something in the salt air coming off the Pacific Ocean. Only local agencies on or (relatively) near the west coast asked a federal appeals court to block the Federal Communication Commission’s decision to preempt local ownership of streetlights and other municipal property that’s planted in the public right of way. Contrary to my prediction, the rest of the U.S. is sitting it out. I checked the websites of the federal appeals courts around the country, and didn’t find any new challenges.

Twenty-two cities, two counties and three state-level League of Cities organisations joined the three lawsuits filed in the San Francisco-based ninth circuit court of appeals last week. The roll of honor is…

City of Yuma, Arizona

League of Arizona Cities and Towns

City of Arcadia, California

City of Burlingame, California

City of Culver City, California

City of Huntington Beach, California

City of Los Angeles, California

City of Monterey, California

City of Ontario, California

City of Piedmont, California

City of San Jacinto, California

City of San Jose, California

City of Shafter, California

Los Angeles County, California

Town of Fairfax, California

League of California Cities

City of Las Vegas, Nevada

City of Portland, Oregon

League of Oregon Cities

City of Bellevue, Washington

City of Burien, Washington

City of Gig Harbor, Washington

City of Issaquah, Washington

City of Kirkland, Washington

City of Seattle, Washington

City of Tacoma, Washington

King County, Washington

I did find one more telco that jumped on the greedy wagon: the Puerto Rico Telephone Company joined AT&T and Sprint in asking appeals courts to automatically give them the privilege of hanging their equipment on poles – whether they own them or not – if a city takes too long to process a permit application. Those petitions were filed in Boston, the District of Columbia and Denver, respectively.

It’ll take a few days, maybe a week or two, for the federal court system to decide if and where the cases will be heard together. Harold Feld has an excellent explanation of how that works here. It might ultimately be done by a lottery, or by mutual agreement or it’s possible that the telcos’ appeals will be heard separately from the local agency ones.